| name | hima-covenant |
| description | Declare and audit the per-project disciplines (cadence, branching, testing, architecture, methodology) that the pluggable StageSkillMap resolves against. |
| stage | meta |
| source | base |
| mode | force |
Purpose
Set the per-project floor every stage's skill map resolves against — cadence, branching,
testing, architecture, and methodology choices declared once and audited thereafter. Forced
once per project (init/update); advisory to read on every subsequent stage.
When to use
- Project init, or first time a cycle needs to resolve a stage skill and no disciplines file
exists yet — this is a hard gate at that moment.
- Any time cadence, branching, testing, architecture, or methodology policy changes.
- Read-only consultation at the start of any stage thereafter (advisory, not re-forced).
Steps
- Check for an existing per-project disciplines declaration; if absent, this is a forced gate —
do not proceed with stage work until it exists.
- Declare practice axes explicitly: cadence, branching model, testing policy, architecture
boundary, methodology — sourced from founder statement or existing project convention, not
invented defaults.
- Validate the declaration against the current schema version; keep frontmatter and code in
sync (a disciplines file that contradicts the codebase is worse than none).
- On subsequent stages, read the declared disciplines and apply them as the floor — do not
silently default to a different convention.
- Update the declaration (not append a parallel one) when a discipline changes.
Done when
- A disciplines file exists, schema-valid, matching what the codebase actually does.
- Every stage's skill resolution can point to this file as the floor it inherited.
